Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday May 10, 2012 @09:52AM
from the my-sympathy-is-bounded dept.

halfEvilTech writes "Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's own words have now become a victim of Iran's massive online censorship infrastructure. Khamenei, according to a translation by RFE, replied [to a question about the censorship laws themselves]: 'In general, the use of antifiltering software is subject to the laws and regulations of the Islamic republic, and it is not permissible to violate the law.' However, his own use of the word 'antifiltering' apparently triggered Iran's own filtering system, making Khamenei's words inaccessible to most Iranians."
Which seems to be a universal problem with such filters: even for proponents, they tend to backfire.

This isn't secret filtering. This is the government (claiming it is only) trying to block out non Islamic content, it's censorship and they probably have similar policies for other media. In that situation it's no secret that they're filtering, or that they're censoring. In fact we censor child pornography in the west, and as a society people know about and are fully aware of this censorship. We don't make an effort to censor discussions of how to get around the censorship of child porn, but if you believe Islamic values will be compromised by exposure to decadent western culture and imperialist thoughts, or zionist propaganda then discussions of how to get around filtering are very much problematic.

Journalists here have a certain amount of power to know things which are censored but they don't talk about, or don't talk about yet. Usually the press gets a pre-brief before official briefings, they know what that loud banging sound at the whitehouse is, they know who is accused of a crime even if their name is protected by a publication ban etc.

Filtering is just an effort to enforce censorship. It's not the only method, and if you're reasonably upfront about what you're censoring then there's no need for secret filtering, it's just filtering in support of existing censorship laws. You may think Iran is not a country of decent laws, but I would argue they are middle of the road. Easily half the world is far more backwards, corrupt and far more arbitrary than Iran. They may not be good, but at least they acknowledge that they're censoring content and using filtering to try and enforce that.